On the topic of engaged scholarship, Sa’ed Atshan shares: “This conference is for people who are passionate about supporting LGBT movements in the Middle East/North Africa region – not just academics, but practitioners. I want there to be really robust conversations between them. It’s not that they’re mutually exclusive; some are able to bridge those worlds. But if we really want to embody the spirit of engaged scholarship, we have to be able to have conversations across these disciplinary boundaries, and with people who are working in the world outside the academy. That’s why we’ve invited artists, novelists, human rights activists, journalists, filmmakers, and religious leaders. It’s a really diverse group of people who share a commitment to supporting LGBT rights in the region. But they come at it from different angles. I hope the scholarship that the academics produce can inform the practitioners’ work, but also that the work that people are doing on the ground – through artistic expression, for example – can inform our scholarship as well.”